The following document constitutes the FAI’s political position in relation to NATO, the US bases and the Spanish state’s acceptance of complicity in its crimes.
We encourage the various organisations that share our anti-imperialist approaches to express their adherence to this Manifesto, in the form at the bottom of the page.
MANIFESTO OF THE CAMPAIGN “VENEZUELA SOBERANA, VENEZUELA BOLIVARIANA (MANOS FUERA DE VENEZUELA)”
NO TO THE IMPERIALIST WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA
Since July 2017, when the terrorist violence unleashed by the “guarimbas” and the coup opposition was stopped, the strategy of overthrowing the government and destroying the Venezuelan state has taken a new direction. From that moment on, the coup opposition has acted mainly from the outside, preparing the ground and public opinion for “humanitarian intervention.”
The interference in the affairs of Venezuela is part of the imperialist global war that is currently aimed at the Bolivarian country. But the imperialist war has come a long way. It began after World War II with U.S. domination over the planet to appropriate resources, markets, communications, biodiversity and culture, trying to subjugate and integrate all countries in the capitalist logic that it hegemonizes. In addition to fuelling conflicts in Africa, supporting coups d’état and covert war in Latin America, overthrowing governments and setting up puppet presidents, it has been at war for 67 years on the Korean peninsula, 59 years in war against Cuba, 17 against Afghanistan, 8 against Syria and 20 against Venezuela.
The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” was launched by the Clinton administration to justify NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, served to intervene in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and is now intended to apply to Venezuela.
The discourse of the “humanitarian crisis” has served to justify the armed intervention, war and plundering of the countries to which it has been applied. The ground is prepared for the invasion through the blockade and economic sanctions, the economic war to strangle the economy (to make the economy squeal as Kissinger said before the coup d’état in Chile), and the media war (of propaganda) to create the psychological conditions in international public opinion to accept a coup d’état and an armed intervention. In other words, it is about making war and invasion of a country acceptable or even “necessary,” as the “Venezuelan opposition” claims.
All modern armed interventions have followed the same protocol: demonize the government and the president, isolate the country and finally intervene.
The “humanitarian crisis” is a category of international law that is regulated by the United Nations and that allows us to rigorously establish the variables that must occur for a country to request external aid. In the case of Venezuela, the report of independent expert Alfred de Zayas, commissioned by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and published in September 2018, clearly establishes that in Venezuela there is no humanitarian crisis but rather an induced economic crisis. That Venezuela has sufficient resources of its own to attend to its population and that the causes of the shortage of medicines and food are due to the economic blockade. As Zayas points out, the economic blockade is similar to medieval sieges and its effects on the population are bloody and destructive as much as an armed intervention.
The United States, its European allies and part of the Latin American countries subordinated to the empire (the self-styled Grupo de Lima) began the offensive trying to delegitimize President Nicolas Maduro. To do so, they used the outlawed National Assembly, which is in contempt of court and suspended from office. The aggression against Venezuela begins to combine the “parliamentary coup”, the strangulation of the economy, the psychological war, the military threats on the border both with Colombia and Brazil, and a media war that prepares the characters who, trained and pointed out by the United States, will be in charge of “legitimizing” the destruction of state structures and the plundering of resources; this is the case of the self-proclaimed interim president.
An important part of the Venezuelan opposition is “genetically coup-plotter.” It is not interested in dialogue or peace, as demonstrated when at the last moment and after a call from the U.S. State Department they refused to sign the peace accords drawn up in Costa Rica under the auspices of the Vatican and the mediation of former president Zapatero. The government of Nicolás Maduro has always called for dialogue and peace, but without renouncing a model of sovereign State and at the service of the popular classes.
For the Venezuelan oligarchy, peace is not acceptable because they will never allow their privileges and wealth to be taken away from them. The Spanish and Venezuelan elites coincide with the imperialist dynamic of privatization and appropriation of all Venezuelan resources. In that logic, its priority objective is that the Venezuelan State serve the private interests of the elites and subjugate the popular classes, as was the case before 1998 when Chávez won the presidential elections.
The media war has not stopped since the Venezuelan government changed its banner in favor of the Venezuelan working class. They have flooded the entire communication spectrum, including social networks, with false news. Anything goes to shore up the image of chaos and “necessary intervention” in Venezuela. The Spanish media, both public and private, openly support the self-proclaimed coup and U.S. directives. Their only sources are those of the opposition, and when they use the sources of the Venezuelan government it is only to misrepresent and deny that version. The news is partial and aligned with the discourse of intervention. Never before has there been such an aggressive and violent media campaign against a sovereign state, boosted by new technologies and the concentration of media companies.
The war against Venezuela is not going to start in the next few days, the war started at the same moment Hugo Chávez came to power, from that moment there has been a coup d’état (2002), an oil strike, guarimbas, terrorist acts, and more than three years of a devastating economic war. As if that were not enough, Obama decreed that Venezuela was an unusual and extraordinary threat, an executive order that Trump renewed twice, and for months there has been open talk of armed intervention.
The Anti-imperialist Internationalist Front and all the organizations, movements and people who subscribe to this manifesto, defend and denounce:
We defend Venezuelan sovereignty and the principle of non-interference as enshrined in the United Nations Charter, as well as in resolutions 2123 (1965) and 2625 (1970) on decolonization.
We defend the legitimacy and legality of the Bolivarian government of President Nicolás Maduro, who became president after a clean and transparent electoral process, as recognized by the majority of the countries that make up the international community, including the most populous on the planet (Russia, China, India and Iran) and the Carter Foundation, which has endorsed the independence of the Venezuelan Electoral Power and the cleanliness and reliability of its electoral processes.
We denounce the United States and its allies for trying to turn Venezuela into a neo-colony. We denounce that in addition to the appropriation of resources, its objective is to destroy the example of Venezuela and that no government is left out of the capitalist logic. The imperialist objective hidden under the slogans of “democracy and freedom” is to reconvert the Venezuelan state under the neoliberal directive.
We denounce the unlawful actions of the Spanish government, its subordination to U.S. interests and the creation of a smokescreen to hide internal problems and the arms race. The Spanish government, a member of NATO, shows that it is not a sovereign government by subordinating the interests of the Spanish people to the interests of companies and the U.S. government. Its positioning against Venezuela, the recognition of the self-proclaimed president, the support for the coup opposition places it in the most absolute ILLEGALITY. Just as Aznar did in the Azores trio, he becomes an accomplice and responsible for bringing the war to Venezuela.
We denounce that Venezuela has become a smokescreen for the Spanish government, the same as in the United States, which in electoral periods serves to hide the serious internal problems of this country: the corruption of Spanish institutions, the trial of Catalan politicians, the economic crisis that places us at the head of inequality throughout Europe, etc.
The subordination of the Kingdom of Spain to the United States is also linked to an increase in our country’s arms race. News such as General M. Scaparrotti’s request to the U.S. Senate to add two destroyers and an aircraft carrier to the four U.S. destroyers who are already displaced at the Rota base as part of the NATO missile shield, show that the government’s commitment is not to peace but to war led by the United States (10/03/2019).
We denounce the Venezuelan coup opposition whose strategy has always been destabilization and coup d’état. That the self-proclaimed president of Venezuela has a long history trained by the CIA to overthrow the Bolivarian government. The program he has presented is the program of a coup plotter. He affirms that once Nicolás Maduro is overthrown, it will be necessary to create the conditions for the elections for which he does not set a deadline. Creating the conditions implies privatizing all of Venezuela’s resources (its sale to the U.S.) and “cleaning up” all Bolivarian officials.
We denounce the Spanish media and journalists who should be considered “paraperiodistas” because they do not give news but propaganda and act as agents of war. They flood the news spaces with Fake news. They openly reproduce the speeches of the coup opposition. They falsify and lie by not contrasting the news and directly reproducing the messages of U.S. agencies and sources. We denounce media terrorism that encourages conflict instead of feeding the way for peaceful solutions.
We hold and defend that as anti-imperialist individuals, organizations and movements committed to internationalism, we cannot stand on the sidelines.
We maintain that equidistance is not possible when talking about war. We denounce that equidistance is part of aggression. Venezuela has the right to defend itself. At the present time, in the face of the situation of war in which we find ourselves, the supposed “criticisms” from the left to the policy of the Bolivarian government, or the half-measures when it comes to positioning oneself without hesitating against interference in Venezuela and for the defense of the legitimacy of its government, are deceptive arguments that feed the interfering discourse.
On the other hand, a “generic” discourse against war and in favor of peace is being adopted in which the guilty are diluted and no firm commitments are assumed. By not pointing out those responsible and the causes of the conflict, the victim could easily become the culprit of his situation (mismanagement, corruption, authoritarianism….). These positions contribute objectively to the development of the war against Venezuela because they reassure the consciences of militancy and public opinion.
To defend Bolivarian Venezuela is to defend the dignity and sovereignty of a brother nation. As Fidel said: “To be an internationalist is to pay off our own debt to humanity. Whoever is not capable of fighting for others will never be capable enough of fighting for himself.”
NO TO IMPERIALIST WAR AGAINST VENEZUELA!
